Farm yard surfacing in Blandford Forum

North Dorset is dairy country, and a dairy yard is one of the hardest surfaces there is to keep in good order. It is not the total weight that does the damage. It is the repetition.

Why dairy yards fail in the same place every time

A tanker comes in every single day of the year, whatever the weather, and it covers the same few metres of entrance and collection area every time. It turns in roughly the same spot, brakes in the same spot and stands in the same spot. That concentrated, repeated loading tears a surface apart in a way that occasional heavy traffic never does.

So the collection area and the tanker route are almost always the first things to go, long before the rest of the yard shows any wear. We build those to a heavier specification as a matter of course. It costs a little more once and it stops you rebuilding the same twenty metres every few years.

Blackmore Vale clay

The vale is heavy clay that stays wet from November to spring. Water sitting under a yard destroys it from below, so the drainage is not a finishing item here, it is most of the job. Falls need setting so slurry and rainwater go where you want them, ditches need to be clear and discharging, and where a yard has been extended over the years the original drainage is often no longer adequate for the area now draining into it.

Working on a live dairy

A dairy cannot shut. Milking happens twice a day, the tanker comes when it comes, and stock still has to move. We agree the sequence before we start, phase the work so there is always a route for the tanker and the feed lorry, and keep the site clean because loose stone and cattle do not mix.

Tell us the times that cannot move and we will build the programme around them. It is a normal part of working on a dairy unit and it is not something we need reminding about.